Drug-War Insanity

Speaking of insanity, here’s the latest news about the drug war from an e-mail from DRCNet:

One would think after Atlanta police killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, that they would get the idea, but they haven’t, and the carnage continues. Last Friday, 1/4/08, a SWAT team, serving an ordinary drug search warrant, invaded the Ohio home of Tarika Wilson — an innocent woman — shot and killed her, and shot her one-year-old son. “They went in that home shooting,” her mother said at a vigil that night. The boy lost at least one of his fingers. Two dogs were shot too.

Radley Balko, who tracks such abuses, has more about the raid in a first,second, and third post. Here’s a quote from Balko’s third post:

Lima police and city officials are bunkering down, as almost always happens in these cases. We do now know that Tarika Wilson and her son were shot on the second floor, after police had taken her boyfriend Anthony Terry–the man they were after–into custody. Police still haven’t said what quantity of drugs they found, nor have they mentioned whether Wilson or Terry fired a weapon.

Even assuming the worst about the victims, the police in this case were totally out of control. Why do we continue to let this happen, here, in America?